Sunday, January 10, 2010

The challenge of inner work and the struggle for realness…

This bitch is still riding a Blues road victory high…thank the hockey gods!

‘Twas worth staying up late to watch my beloved Blues get a win in Los Angeles.

Congrats to Coach Payne on his first NHL win and may it be one of many more to come.

Moving forward.

A bitch is a big fan of inner work and realness and both are key building blocks to practicing the fine art of bitchitude.

Inner work is challenging because most of us don’t like to examine ourselves and whether we are living a life of example or superficial bullshit.

But if inner work is challenging, realness is a struggle.

Realness is about keeping shit real…about taking the results of inner work out for a spin. Realness is about working against the many small and large opportunities for hypocritical behavior that present themselves to a body everyday.

Note – insulting Native Americans is not mentioned as one of the 12 steps.

I haven’t heard that phrase used in years, but it was once a popular phrase used to emphasize the truth of a thing. It fell out of use because “injun” is an ethnic slur.

Now there are some people who are going to reject that by going on and on about how criticism of Steele’s use of the slur is yet another example of political correctness run amuck. Many of these same assholes defend the use of "tar baby" and enjoy bigot porn like Rush Limbaugh.

Back here on Earth, using ethnic slurs is not something folks should waste their breathe defending. It was insulting…and the last thing the political party of Rush the magic negro Limbaugh needs is their chairman dropping ethnic slurs on national television while trying to make the point that the GOP is in touch with the masses.

I don’t give a rat’s ass that Steele is a person of color. If anything that makes his use of the slur worse because even Michael Steele’s simple-minded ass knows the sting of being called an ethnic slur.

This…umm, opinion…is revealed in the book "Game Change" by Time Magazine's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann.

Aside – a bitch is more than a wee bit surprised that another allegation in the book, that President Clinton failed to gain Senator Kennedy’s endorsement for Senator Clinton during the Democratic Primary because at one time he told Senator Kennedy that a few years ago Obama would have been serving the pair coffee.

Blink.

Where was I?

Oh yes, Senator Reid has apologized and President Obama has accepted but…yeah, but.

This is where inner work and realness come into play.

I really don’t want to be like Mike and hold one verbal malfunction maker accountable while letting the other ass off the hook.

I also don’t want to be a hypocrite on this. I’ve had my share of verbal malfunctions and had to deal with the shame and embarrassment of making them all the while knowing that only time can heal those wounds and there’s no guarantee that time will get that job done.

But Michael Steele is the Chair of the GOP…and his words reflect on that party and the policies of that party and the motivations behind those policies.

Senator Reid is the Senate Majority Leader…and he’s responsible for guiding all kinds of legislation through the Senate. It’s disturbing to think that he holds those beliefs and is a leader on important social policy.

And, much like Steele’s use of an ethnic slur is amplified in it’s wrongness by the fact that he is a person of color who has been subject to many an ethnic slur (a lot of them from his side of the aisle…wince)…Senator Reid’s verbal malfunction is amplified by the fact that the Democratic Party has dined out for years on the perception that it understands and works against racial discrimination and the stereotyping that fuels a lot of that discrimination.

I’ve spent the past year listening to fools proclaim America post-racial and trying to point out the many ways we aren’t.

It makes my Afro hurt that the liberal herd turned on Senator Lott when he lifted up Senator Strom Thurmond’s candidacy (based on segregation now and segregation forever) as a missed opportunity to better the nation but now many of them expect Senator Reid to get a pass for perpetuating the myth of "acceptable blackness".

And there it is…the challenge of inner work and the struggle for realness.

How people respond, if people respond, will define them…

…just like verbal malfunctions, race baiting political campaigns and ethnic slurs define the people involved in that shit.